36 Years Ago, This Iconic Scene From Rob Reiner’s Classic ‘When Harry Met Sally’ Changed Comedy Forever

The late Rob Reiner left a lasting impression on the American entertainment landscape. As an actor, he was part of the landmark ‘70s television sitcom All in the Family. Transitioning into the director’s chair in the ‘80s, he had an impressive streak of pop culture-defining films that still hold up against today’s cinema. But the one movie that forever underscores Reiner’s legacy is the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally…

Written by the legendary Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, You Got Mail), When Harry Met Sally… marked a complete shift in the way comedies about modern romance were handled. Reiner’s out-of-the-box pairing of Saturday Night Live comedian Billy Crystal and then-rising star Meg Ryan resulted in a grounded tale about the real-world difficulties in relationships between men and women. Lacking any true fantastical silver screen love story elements, When Harry Met Sally… earned universal acclaim with a 89% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and was added to the US National Film Registry in 2022. In the 36 years since it hit theaters, the film remains a groundbreaking rom-com thanks in part to an iconic scene involving Ryan, a sandwich, and Reiner’s real-life mother.

What Is ‘When Harry Met Sally…’ About?

Set over the course of a twelve-year span, University of Chicago grads Harry Burns (Crystal) and Sally Albright (Ryan) find their lives constantly crossing paths. Harry does not believe that a man and a woman can have a friendship due to “the sex part,” while Sally believes the exact opposite. With each passing year, the pair encounters numerous relationships, often ending in heartbreak, while their friendship is constantly tested by their growing mutual attraction. Only upon Sally learning of her ex-boyfriend (Steven Ford) getting married to another woman does her friendship with Harry take an emotional turn that will change their feelings forever.

The lasting appeal of When Harry Met Sally… comes from the witty dialogue in Ephron’s screenplay and the manner in which Crystal and Ryan captured the way middle-aged couples behave. The comedy stood alone against the majority of Hollywood-driven romance tales of the ‘80s produced by filmmakers such as John Hughes and Garry Marshall because the character development comes out of the natural conversations between the couple rather than MTV-inspired montages and fantastical situations heightening the relationship. Harry and Sally speak to each other in the same way real adults do when it comes to love and sex. Sometimes it is awkward, and other times the humor cuts through the tension. But the intimacy is apparent even when the characters have difficult conversations about sex and friendship. The Katz’s Delicatessen sequence encapsulates everything that makes When Harry Met Sally… the most relatable rom-com in movie history.

Rob Reiner’s Mother Makes Cinema History

Image via Columbia Pictures

Midway through the film, Harry and Sally have lunch at the famed Manhattan deli in the Lower East Side when the former reinforces his belief about male and female friendships. As soon as the cynical Harry asserts the idea that men know when a woman fakes an orgasm, Sally goes into a highly public display of a loud, fully clothed self-pleasure performance, which captures the attention of all the deli patrons and staff. Just when it seems like an outrageous moment is over, an elderly woman (Estelle Reiner) remarks to a waiter the immortal line “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Reiner’s genius approach to the now-famous deli scene is the observational direction he gives in the framing and editing style. Lacking a musical score to highlight the humor, the scene plays in a manner that could really happen in any restaurant establishment. The over-the-top role-play of Sally contrasts with the mixed faces of stunned silence from the patrons, as well as Harry looking both embarrassed and amazed to be proven wrong. Yet, it was Estelle Reiner’s one line that turned the outrageous moment into a significant part of the American lexicon, one to be studied in colleges and by aspiring comedy filmmakers who desire to learn the art of comedic timing.

Many rom-coms released after When Harry Met Sally… tried and fell short of reproducing anything close to the deli scene. The actual Katz’s Deli holds a sign pointing to the exact table where Crystal and Ryan sat for customers to do their own recreations of the scene. Additionally, the stars reprised their characters for a Hellmann’s mayonnaise commercial for Super Bowl LIX, with Sydney Sweeney taking the Estelle Reiner part. As memorable as the scene is, however, credit goes to Reiner’s ability to ground humor in honest truth by trusting Crystal and Ryan to see eye-to-eye with the audience without flinching.

When Harry Met Sally… is streaming on Hulu in the US.

Release Date

July 21, 1989

Runtime

95 minutes

Writers

Nora Ephron